Why would a small town have superheroes?

I m sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me

Message 1 of 16
, Nov 23, 2012

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I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.

But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.

There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.

One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).

Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.

Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...

Other ideas?

John McMullen (Searching for a .sig)jhmcmullen@...

Nicholas Clements

we played a great campaign set in a small town where a rogue scientist from a government project introduced a retrovirus into the town water supply my (bad)

Message 2 of 16
, Nov 23, 2012

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we played a great campaign set in a small town where a rogue scientist from a government project introduced a retrovirus into the town water supply

we ran two TV "seasons" and great fun was had by all. the basic understanding was that the pcs were designed as ordinary small town folk, and each had to name one relative, one friend and one workmate, so there were NPCs they had a stake in straight away - oh, and we designed classic power "sets", but no-one knew what they would get, as they were allocated at random. Watching pcs trying to work out whether they were actually bullet proof or not was.... interesting

On 23 Nov 2012, at 19:34, John McMullen wrote:

I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.

But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.

There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.

One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).

Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.

Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...

I think small town works better for the street level vigilante hero like Daredevil. Small towns can still have crime; drugs, smuggling, arms and even human

Message 3 of 16
, Nov 23, 2012

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I think small town works better for the street level vigilante hero like Daredevil. Small towns can still have crime; drugs, smuggling, arms and even human trafficking can easily go through a smaller town.

In fact a small can even be under the complete controlled by a powerful gangsters more so than a metropolis which in turn means the injustice can be much more in the open. For inspiration think about all those classic Westerns where lone white-hat stands alone against on the crooked cattle baron who runs the town. That's the small town superhero.

I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.

But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.

There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.

One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).

Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.

Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...

Other ideas?

John McMullen (Searching for a .sig)jhmcmullen@...

Gerry

... Soultaker Studios Blog: http://soultakerstudios.blogspot.com/

Message 4 of 16
, Nov 23, 2012

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>From: Soylent Green >I think small town works better for the street level vigilante hero like Daredevil. Small towns can still have crime; drugs, smuggling, arms and even human trafficking can easily go through a smaller >town. In fact a small can even be under the complete controlled by a powerful gangsters more so than a metropolis which in turn means the injustice can be much more in the open. For inspiration

> think about all those classic Westerns where lone white-hat stands alone against on the crooked cattle baron who runs the town. That's the small town superhero.

Just watch shows like Justified, Longmire and/or Sons of Anarchy for crime taking place in smaller towns. All 3 are based in towns/rural areas for the most part, and show various criminal acts (drug dealing, gun running, prostitution, etc). Perfect fodder for a vigilante type

Soultaker Studios Blog: http://soultakerstudios.blogspot.com/

Cameron Mount

Near the small towns I grew up were thing like factories (the M&M plant, for instance), research facilities (Hoffman-LaRoche), and chemical plants (BASF). And

Message 5 of 16
, Nov 23, 2012

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Near the small towns I grew up were thing like factories (the M&M plant, for instance), research facilities (Hoffman-LaRoche), and chemical plants (BASF). And that was all within 15 minutes of where I grew up.

we ran two TV "seasons" and great fun was had by all. the basic understanding was that the pcs were designed as ordinary small town folk, and each had to name one relative, one friend and one workmate, so there were NPCs they had a stake in straight away - oh, and we designed classic power "sets", but no-one knew what they would get, as they were allocated at random. Watching pcs trying to work out whether they were actually bullet proof or not was.... interesting

On 23 Nov 2012, at 19:34, John McMullen wrote:

I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.

But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.

There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.

One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).

Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.

Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...

The small towns I have spent significant time in are all on the Bruce peninsula in Ontario: lots of dairy and beef as the main industries, and towns exist primarily to serve the farms. More recently, my in-laws had a B&B in Port Elgin, which actually has some tourist trade and even some cross-border boating--but nearby Tara does not. (And in between there are three buildings that they swear was once a town...)

If you get into the more southern parts of southern Ontario (none of this is really middle or northern Ontario), you start to get the tobacco farms and you start to see some factories and research--but that area is increasingly urbaniized; towns or villages are minutes apart by car, rather than tens of minutes.

In middle Ontario, towns tend to be more mining operations, and are half an hour or an hour apart. (I wouldn't claim that I've ever been to northern Ontario, and the times I've spent driving in Alberta largely skipped towns.)

When I was driving in rural Ohio, I remember that one town almost blended into the next, usually separated by two barns. (That might be an artifact of where I was; I'm not claiming it's true of the whole state.) You can't call it suburban in the "minivan and mall" sense, but it's not rural in the "corn as high as an elephant's eye" sense, either.

So I'd have to pick the area, too, to decide what "small town" means. (Maybe that Manitoba town, pop. 550, that's selling property lots for $10 to encourage growth.)

Near the small towns I grew up were thing like factories (the M&M plant, for instance), research facilities (Hoffman-LaRoche), and chemical plants (BASF). And that was all within 15 minutes of where I grew up.

we ran two TV "seasons" and great fun was had by all. the basic understanding was that the pcs were designed as ordinary small town folk, and each had to name one relative, one friend and one workmate, so there were NPCs they had a stake in straight away - oh, and we designed classic power "sets", but no-one knew what they would get, as they were allocated at random. Watching pcs trying to work out whether they were actually bullet proof or not was.... interesting

On 23 Nov 2012, at 19:34, John McMullen wrote:

I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.

But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.

There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.

One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).

Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.

Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...

Aaron Williams PS238 may epitomize the coming to it approach. For the beginning of that comic s run, it was clear that the school was deliberated located

Message 7 of 16
, Nov 23, 2012

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Aaron Williams' PS238 may epitomize the "coming to it" approach. For the beginning of that comic's run, it was clear that the school was deliberated located far from any kind of major city. The intent being that the students could work in complete isolation. Villains might target the school as an effort to reach the young, or they might just be after the research notes from some of the instructors. Of course, depending upon the level of super science in the campaign setting, the physical distance might not be an issue. If everyone has access to teleporter technology, no place is really functionally isolated by physical distance.

This might play out similar to the retirement community mentioned in the original post.

Another possibility could be to riff on the Initiative from Buffy. A secret training organization might be present near the small town because of its isolation. As the facility grew, this could cause a pretty significant shift in the types of people residing within the small community.

The Impulse comic series placed the title character in a small Southern town as part of his training. The setting worked well because of the sharp contrasts with the character's impatience and spontaneity. Making that work for a larger (and more random) cast of characters might be considerably more challenging.

I grew up in rural NJ. The town is called Hope. 15 minutes southeast is Hackettstown where M&M is headquartered. And 1o minutes south and west is Belvidere

Message 8 of 16
, Nov 23, 2012

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I grew up in rural NJ. The town is called Hope. 15 minutes southeast is Hackettstown where M&M is headquartered. And 1o minutes south and west is Belvidere which had the BASF and LaRoche plants. (Incidentally, large portions of the original Friday the 13th movie were filmed in Hope, with other segments filmed in nearby Blairstown (10 minutes north and east).

The small towns I have spent significant time in are all on the Bruce peninsula in Ontario: lots of dairy and beef as the main industries, and towns exist primarily to serve the farms. More recently, my in-laws had a B&B in Port Elgin, which actually has some tourist trade and even some cross-border boating--but nearby Tara does not. (And in between there are three buildings that they swear was once a town...)

If you get into the more southern parts of southern Ontario (none of this is really middle or northern Ontario), you start to get the tobacco farms and you start to see some factories and research--but that area is increasingly urbaniized; towns or villages are minutes apart by car, rather than tens of minutes.

In middle Ontario, towns tend to be more mining operations, and are half an hour or an hour apart. (I wouldn't claim that I've ever been to northern Ontario, and the times I've spent driving in Alberta largely skipped towns.)

When I was driving in rural Ohio, I remember that one town almost blended into the next, usually separated by two barns. (That might be an artifact of where I was; I'm not claiming it's true of the whole state.) You can't call it suburban in the "minivan and mall" sense, but it's not rural in the "corn as high as an elephant's eye" sense, either.

So I'd have to pick the area, too, to decide what "small town" means. (Maybe that Manitoba town, pop. 550, that's selling property lots for $10 to encourage growth.)

Near the small towns I grew up were thing like factories (the M&M plant, for instance), research facilities (Hoffman-LaRoche), and chemical plants (BASF). And that was all within 15 minutes of where I grew up.

we ran two TV "seasons" and great fun was had by all. the basic understanding was that the pcs were designed as ordinary small town folk, and each had to name one relative, one friend and one workmate, so there were NPCs they had a stake in straight away - oh, and we designed classic power "sets", but no-one knew what they would get, as they were allocated at random. Watching pcs trying to work out whether they were actually bullet proof or not was.... interesting

On 23 Nov 2012, at 19:34, John McMullen wrote:

I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.

But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.

There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.

One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).

Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.

Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...

TV shows like Eureka and Haven come to mind. Maybe the supers are assigned to protect some secret. Maybe they are locals (probably works best with just 1 or 2). Maybe they don’t wear tights and fight supervillains; maybe they fight against other kinds of threats (Buffy-style).

It could be something based on Gail Simone's Welcome to Traquility comic book, where retired supervillain and superheroes (and their families) live.

Fabrício

Colin T

This got me wondering what if some retired supervillain decided to help protect the families and loved ones of his teammates and their minions except to keep

Message 13 of 16
, Nov 25, 2012

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This got me wondering what if some retired supervillain decided to help protect the families and loved ones of his teammates and their minions except to keep them safe he had to act the part of a superhero to keep the peace?

Throw in the fact his own daughter went hero specifically to try and get him to reform and have her forcibly moved in after the Government (needn't specify which!) tried to kill her for the umpteenth time because although officially has no powers she was outmatching all of the true superheroes without any of the violent, gloryhounding or power hungry tendencies of the modern age of "superheroes" so they had no means of keeping her in line.

So we have a genuine superhero whose been hiding the fact she's a very powerful renegade sorceress posing as the world's most proficient nonpowered crimefighter having to cope with a new identity as the sidekick to her father who nobody outside of her and his former comrades knows he's a megavillain trying to retire dealing with a community thats largely made up of the world's supervillainous families and they're trying to protect them from the rest of the world who are trying to turn them into their new army of supervillains...

Monster of the week?

Most of the people in this community have had one or more of their more villainous loved ones put away by their newest hero... and some of them would definitely want some payback...

--- In icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com, John McMullen <jhmcmullen@...> wrote:
> I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.
>
> But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.
>
> There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.
>
> One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).
>
> Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.
>
> Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...
>
> Other ideas?
>
> John McMullen (Searching for a .sig)
> jhmcmullen@...
>

Colin T

Thanks for the link been a bit busy this weekend reading this! Makes me wish they did a verison of this as a tv series!

Super villains attack the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station? I live in a small town in south western Ontario, Pop 73,000. I ran a supers campaign that took

Message 15 of 16
, Nov 26, 2012

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Super villains attack the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station?

I live in a small town in south western Ontario, Pop 73,000. I ran a supers campaign that took place in our town and it was great. It originally started with some villains from the US getting tired of being kicked around by the Supers in New York and came here. We have several gasoline refineries, a casino and twin bridges into the United States.

The local team, who were more just friends who developed powers, stomped the bad guys in a rather public display. This brought other villains, hero watchers, etc.

Sent from the SDF-5 Command Ship

From: John McMullen <jhmcmullen@...>To: "icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com" <icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2012 3:46:00 PMSubject: Re: [icons-rpg] Why would a small town have superheroes?

The small towns I have spent significant time in are all on the Bruce peninsula in Ontario: lots of dairy and beef as the main industries, and towns exist primarily to serve the farms. More recently, my in-laws had a B&B in Port Elgin, which actually has some tourist trade and even some cross-border boating--but nearby Tara does not. (And in between there are three buildings that they swear was once a town...)

If you get into the more southern parts of southern Ontario (none of this is really middle or northern Ontario), you start to get the tobacco farms and you start to see some factories and research--but that area is increasingly urbaniized; towns or villages are minutes apart by car, rather than tens of minutes.

In middle Ontario, towns tend to be more mining operations, and are half an hour or an hour apart. (I wouldn't claim that I've ever been to northern Ontario, and the times I've spent driving in Alberta largely skipped towns.)

When I was driving in rural Ohio, I remember that one town almost blended into the next, usually separated by two barns. (That might be an artifact of where I was; I'm not claiming it's true of the whole state.) You can't call it suburban in the "minivan and mall" sense, but it's not rural in the "corn as high as an elephant's eye" sense, either.

So I'd have to pick the area, too, to decide what "small town" means. (Maybe that Manitoba town, pop. 550, that's selling property lots for $10 to encourage growth.)

Near the small towns I grew up were thing like factories (the M&M plant, for instance), research facilities (Hoffman-LaRoche), and chemical plants (BASF). And that was all within 15 minutes of where I grew up.

we ran two TV "seasons" and great fun was had by all. the basic understanding was that the pcs were designed as ordinary small town folk, and each had to name one relative, one friend and one workmate, so there were NPCs they had a stake in straight away - oh, and we designed classic power "sets", but no-one knew what they would get, as they were allocated at random. Watching pcs trying to work out whether they were actually bullet proof or not was.... interesting

On 23 Nov 2012, at 19:34, John McMullen wrote:

I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.

But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.

There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.

One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).

Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.

Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...

--- In icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com, Mike Morgado <cm.morgado@...> wrote:
>
> Super villains attack the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station?Â
>
> I live in a small town in south western Ontario, Pop 73,000. Â I ran a supers campaign that took place in our town and it was great. Â It originally started with some villains from the US getting tired of being kicked around by the Supers in New York and came here. Â We have several gasoline refineries, a casino and twin bridges into the United States.
>
> The local team, who were more just friends who developed powers, stomped the bad guys in a rather public display. Â This brought other villains, hero watchers, etc. Â
>
>
> Â
> Sent from the SDF-5 Command Ship
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: John McMullen <jhmcmullen@...>
> To: "icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com" <icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2012 3:46:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [icons-rpg] Why would a small town have superheroes?
>
>
> Â
> That's interesting, Cameron. Do you mind my asking what area? Tell me off-list, if you want to.
> Â
> The small towns I have spent significant time in are all on the Bruce peninsula in Ontario: lots of dairy and beef as the main industries, and towns exist primarily to serve the farms. More recently, my in-laws had a B&B in Port Elgin, which actually has some tourist trade and even some cross-border boating--but nearby Tara does not. (And in between there are three buildings that they swear was once a town...)
> Â
> If you get into the more southern parts of southern Ontario (none of this is really middle or northern Ontario), you start to get the tobacco farms and you start to see some factories and research--but that area is increasingly urbaniized; towns or villages are minutes apart by car, rather than tens of minutes.
> Â
> In middle Ontario, towns tend to be more mining operations, and are half an hour or an hour apart. (I wouldn't claim that I've ever been to northern Ontario, and the times I've spent driving in Alberta largely skipped towns.)
> Â
> When I was driving in rural Ohio, I remember that one town almost blended into the next, usually separated by two barns. (That might be an artifact of where I was; I'm not claiming it's true of the whole state.) You can't call it suburban in the "minivan and mall" sense, but it's not rural in the "corn as high as an elephant's eye" sense, either.
> Â
> So I'd have to pick the area, too, to decide what "small town" means. (Maybe that Manitoba town, pop. 550, that's selling property lots for $10 to encourage growth.)
> Â
> John McMullen (Searching for a .sig)
> jhmcmullen@...
>
>
> From: Cameron Mount <cameron.a.mount@...>
> To: "icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com" <icons-rpg@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2012 3:31 PM
> Subject: Re: [icons-rpg] Why would a small town have superheroes?
>
>
>
>
>
> Near the small towns I grew up were thing like factories (the M&M plant, for instance), research facilities (Hoffman-LaRoche), and chemical plants (BASF). And that was all within 15 minutes of where I grew up.
>
> Just some ideas from real life that could be used in a game.
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 23, 2012, at 14:49, Nicholas Clements <nick@...> wrote:
>
>
> Â
> >we played a great campaign set in a small town where a rogue scientist from a government project introduced a retrovirus into the town water supply
> >
> >
> >my (bad) write up is at
> >
> >
> >Changes - RPGnet Forums
> >
> >
> >we ran two TV "seasons" and great fun was had by all. Â the basic understanding was that the pcs were designed as ordinary small town folk, and each had to name one relative, one friend and one workmate, so there were NPCs they had a stake in straight away - oh, and we designed classic power "sets", but no-one knew what they would get, as they were allocated at random. Â Watching pcs trying to work out whether they were actually bullet proof or not was.... Â interesting
> >
> >
> >On 23 Nov 2012, at 19:34, John McMullen wrote:
> >
> >Â
> >>
> >>
> >>I'm sitting working and listening to one of the Vigilance Press actual play podcasts, dealing with Mutants & Masterminds and Beacon City, and that made me wonder about small towns. Namely, campaigns are usually set in large cities. The reasons for cities are obvious: traffic, a reason for people (that is, supervillains) to come and go. You can have a revolving door for the bad guys.
> >>Â
> >>But a small town (my folks lived in small towns, and I spent the majority of weekends in my kidhood either on farms or in small towns) strikes me as a different kind of environment, and it might be interesting.
> >>Â
> >>There are lots of ways to have a one-shot or an adventure set in a small town. (Murder of Crowes, for instance, just to be ICONS-specific.) But an on-going campaign is a bit harder.
> >>Â
> >>One of the ways is to have the Meteor Monster of the Week thing that they had the first season or two in Smallville. Essentially, whatever makes supers is in town: it could be that the town is built on a Hellmouth (not every one ends up having a city).
> >>Â
> >>Another way is for the supers to come to it. For instance, if your small town is trying to increase its population by being a retirement community, and a lot of ex-spies or former superheroes or operatives move there because it's cheap, people with grudges or children who have been taught that they have to hate The Velvet Mallet of Justice or something, well, they'll show up.
> >>Â
> >>Or you can just claim that the popular teleportation spell that the planet's Master Magus uses goes through town, and some of them get out...
> >>Â
> >>Other ideas?
> >>Â
> >>John McMullen (Searching for a .sig)
> >>jhmcmullen@...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>

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